The invention relates generally to a system and a method for teaching how to play a harmonica. More particularly, the invention relates to a multimedia system and a method for introducing and teaching basic techniques and songs for playing the harmonica.
Many people enjoy playing a musical instrument for their own pleasure and the entertainment of their friends and relatives. These people do not aspire to be professional musicians, but only desire achieving a level of skill in playing the instrument, producing sounds that are welcomed by those who hear them. The amateur wants to learn a simple instrument and does not want to invest in many hours or great expense studying with a professional music teacher.
A harmonica is a reed instrument used in many styles of music such as blues, folk, jazz, county and even rock and roll music. The harmonica is a good choice for the amateur to learn, lending itself to self-instruction, relatively inexpensive and easy to master, providing a wide repertoire of songs from which to choose.
The harmonica has a plurality of reed chambers, each having a hole and multiple reeds. The harmonica is played by placing a pair of lips over at least one hole and blowing air or drawing air through the hole, causing the reeds to vibrate, producing two different notes from the same hole by either blowing or drawing air.
While there are many types of harmonicas, two popular styles are the chromatic and the diatonic. The diatonic is the basic one harmonic key harmonica having holes opening the reed chambers, each reed chamber have a plurality of reeds. The chromatic harmonic uses a button-activated sliding bar to redirect air from the hole in the mouthpiece to the selected reed desired. When the button is not pressed, an altered diatonic major scale of the key of the harmonica is available, while depressing the button accesses the same scale a semi-tone higher in each hole.
Learning to play an instrument, whether it is one that is relatively simple such as the harmonica or complex, such as the piano, involves repetition and drills, practice and challenges. There have been many methods of self-instruction proposed, both for learning to play the harmonica or musical instruments in general. Zankman in U.S. Pat. No. 4,402,249 discloses a printed card displaying a matrix of notes, each column above a hole of the harmonica, mounted on holder in front of the instrument before the eyes of the player. It shows the player which hole or holes to blow or draw through, following down the rows. The player must keep track of which row is being used without any aids and can easily lose the place. No instruction about the length of a note is provided. The method does provide any sound for the player to hear to determine if player is properly producing the note by comparison.
Similarly, Shelton discloses in U.S. Pat. No. 5,309,812 a set of color-coded blocks representing chords printed on a flexible sheet attaching to the harmonica to be used as a mnemonic reference. Similarly, tempo and persistence of a note are not provided, nor is any sound for the player to hear for comparing the note being sounded by the player to a correct sound of the note.
Others have proposed systems for self-instruction for instruments generally. MacCutcheon discloses in U.S. Pat. No. 6,870,085 a system using an elaborate system of colors and stylized animal images that are applied to the instrument and the sheet music is annotated to create mnemonic references. Tempo and persistence are not addressed. The method does not provide any sound for the player to hear to determine if player is properly producing the note by comparison.
Owen teaches in U.S. Pat. No. 5,585,583 an audio and visual presentation that combines the musical output of the practice instrument with a computer generated output for comparison but does not anticipate the next note to be played while a current note is sounded.
Hagstrom teaches in U.S. Patent Application Publication 2010/0077906 an audio-visual instruction method for a wind instrument displaying visual indicia of how and when to inhale or exhale. None of these methods give any additional visual or audio clues to the sequence of notes that is easy to follow and none shows how to operate the various components of the instrument in cooperation to produce a desired sound.
While these units may be suitable for the particular purpose employed, or for general use, they would not be as suitable for the purposes of the present invention as disclosed hereafter.